Project: Runaway Bride by Heidi Betts

to another. Hadn’t wanted to see her parents’ disappointed faces or hear the lectures about how lucky she’d been to be engaged to Paul, who came from such an upstanding and influential family.
    And even if she hadn’t wanted to keep her relationship with Reid a secret, he certainly wasn’t looking for anything permanent. Their affair had been wild and forbidden, and completely out of character for her.
    Juliet suspected that was another reason he insisted on sticking to her like double-sided tape. Unfinished business, in his mind. Not to mention a badly bruised male ego.
    Which wasn’t her fault. She’d been honest with him from the start. But apparently women weren’t the only ones capable of getting attached and letting their emotions overrule their common sense.
    She gave a snort of derision, hunching her shoulders and doing her best to snuggle more deeply into her sweater because she refused to go back inside while Reid was using the kitchen as though he owned it.
    He’d insisted on fixing dinner—he said to thank her for her hospitality. Sarcasm alert on that one. It had fairly dripped from his tongue and glittered off the pearly white teeth he flashed in a wolfish smile.
    She suspected his offer was based more on the fact that she couldn’t cook. Well, not much, anyway. And he probably didn’t want to risk food poisoning so far from town and the nearest hospital.
    The good news was that whatever morning sickness she’d been suffering did tend to limit itself to the mornings.
    The bad news was that sitting across from Reid right now while they shared a meal was likely to knot her stomach in an entirely different manner.
    And what exactly was she supposed to do in the morning when her pregnancy symptoms did make an appearance? Every day, she tended to spend a few hours, at least, looking like an extra in one of those deadly virus outbreak movies: all sweaty and flushed and lurching around like a zombie between bouts of retching.
    Oh, yes, it was lovely. She was still waiting for the part where pregnancy was a beautiful experience and she started to “glow.”
    She’d also heard pregnant women were supposed to avoid undue stress, but she couldn’t think of anything more stressful than being this close to Reid right now. Not after the way they’d parted, how she’d just left her fiancé at the altar and given the fact that Reid had no idea she was pregnant with his child.
    She wasn’t sure she wanted him to know, and figuring that out while he was doing his best impression of “Me and My Shadow” didn’t help matters. It was going to be like counting to one thousand while someone else called out random numbers in your ear. She was starting to get a headache just thinking about it.
    Another shiver stole over her and she curled her chilly fingers into fists. She really should go in before she caught a cold or turned into a human freezer pop. Only sheer stubbornness kept her outside when she knew the house was toasty warm even without a fire in the hearth.
    Coming to her rescue—or perhaps luring her farther down the rabbit hole—Reid opened the front door and stuck his head out.
    “Dinner’s ready,” he said, then disappeared back inside.
    She toyed with the idea of ignoring him, just as she’d been toying with the idea of climbing into her BMW and driving away, regardless of his threat to chase after her. But in the end, she was simply too cold, too hungry, and edging toward too darn tired to fight it— him— anymore.
    Warmth surrounded her the minute she stepped inside and closed the door behind her, chasing away any trace of chill lake air that had trailed in with her. She released a sigh of relief, rubbing her hands together before shrugging out of her sweater and draping it neatly over the back of a chair.
    Then she turned her attention to the dining room table, where Reid had put out two place settings and even moved a small vase of artificial flowers from elsewhere in the cabin to the